CHAPTER III

For the second time the horses drawing the King’s litter were killed--only three were left of the four-and-twenty guards who accompanied him. Other soldiers hurried up, and began fastening fresh horses to the litter.

“Make haste,” commanded Karl, “make haste.” It was the thick of the battle; the beginning of the second attack which had begun at nine in the morning.

The first battle had been successful for the Swedes with a fierce onslaught of their famous cavalry; they had scattered the Muscovite horsemen, and taken the outposts of the Russian camp; General Creutz, however, who had been sent to reinforce the victors, lost his way, and the Czar, having time to rally, drove back the Swedish cavalry and captured Slippenbach, their general.

Karl was then about to send for his reserves that had been left with the camp and baggage when, with a brilliant movement, Prince Mentchikoff threw himself between the Swedes and Poltava, thus isolating the King’s forces, and at the same time cutting to pieces a detachment that was coming to his assistance.

Meanwhile the Muscovite infantry were advancing on the main body of the Swedish army. When Karl heard of Mentchikoff’s exploit he could not refrain from a bitter exclamation.

“Too well has he learnt from me the art of war!”

Quickly regaining his habitual composure he gave orders for a general battle, arranging, as best he might, his diminished forces.

He had now only four pieces of cannon, and was beginning to lack ammunition; Peter had at least 120 guns.

It was one of the first volleys from these that had killed the King’s horses and guards.

Karl shivered with rage as his glance swept over the battle, and he thought of the artillery that he had been obliged to abandon in the marshes and forests of the Ukraine, either through the weather or because the horses had perished, and he remembered with a pang the men who had dropped from cold and hunger on those terrible marches.

It was burning hot as the sun rose higher into the pale cloudless sky; the air was foul with dust and smoke, and full of curses, shouts, and orders, and the irregular booming of the Russian guns.

Before the horses could be harnessed to the King’s litter, another cannon-ball fell near; again several of the guards were killed and the litter this time reversed, shattered to pieces, and flung on top of the King who was cast on to the trampled ground.

Four of his officers dragged him from the ruins; he was covered with dust and blood, and almost speechless.

The first line of the Swedes was beginning to fall back.

The swooning King perceived this, but he was almost past speech.

The Muscovite cannonade was so continuous and fierce that those about the King thought of retreating also, to get their master to a place of safety in the rear.

A stretcher was hastily constructed of pikes, and the King was raised shoulder high.

He raised himself on his elbow and cried out for his sword which he had dropped; they gave him this, and a pistol which he grasped in his left hand.

His blue eyes, inflamed with rage and pain, shot a desperate glance over the battle-field. On every side the Swedes were giving way; each line falling back on the other, and the cavalry breaking at either wing.

“Swedes! Swedes!” cried the King.

Rallying his strength with a mighty effort he directed his bearers to take him to the head of several regiments, mentioning these by name. But it was too late; already everything was in irredeemable confusion; General Poniatowski forced his way through the mêlée to the King, and ordered the soldiers to take him to the rear.

Karl made a sign with his head that he would not go, but he could not speak.

“Sire,” said Poniatowski, “the day is lost--Wurtemberg, Rehnsköld, Hamilton, and Stackelberg are prisoners.”

It was doubtful if the King heard; he lay like one insensible, though his blue eyes were open wide and staring through the battle-smoke.

They were now being hotly pursued by a charge with bayonets, pikes, and swords; the intrepid Pole, though he held no rank in the Swedish army, rallied some of the Swedish horse round the person of the King.

Some of those supporting him had fallen, and he lay on the ground.

Poniatowski dismounted and shouted to the King’s valet whom he saw pressing close; the little band of horsemen, guards, officers, and troopers, who did not number in all 500, but who were all that were left to Karl of his hitherto invincible army, kept off the fierce attacks of the Muscovites, while Poniatowski and the valet, with the help of a horse soldier, got the King up and on to Poniatowski’s horse, a noble dark Arab.

Karl did not speak a word; he had tried to mount a horse at the beginning of the engagement, but had been unable to do so, and now the agony of his wound, the shock of his fall, the passion of rage and grief he was in, had so weakened him that he fainted twice while they were getting him on to the charger.

At last it was accomplished, and the valet, mounting behind his master, clasped him round his waist.

The anguish caused to his shattered foot by the movement of the horse brought Karl to his senses; but he was incapable of anything; he had dropped both his sword and pistol, and his head sank on to the breast of the young man behind him.

In this manner did the Swedish cavaliers, fighting off the fierce Muscovite attack every inch of the way, escort their unhappy master.

They had not reached their objective, the baggage camp (the other Swedish camps being already in the hands of the Muscovites), when Karl’s horse was killed under him; one of the officers with him, Colonel Gierta, though sorely wounded himself, gave the King his mount, and again with infinite difficulty Karl was helped into the saddle.

The little troop, fighting through ten Muscovite regiments, at length brought the King to the baggage of the Swedish army.

The Russians were hotly pursuing them, and Poniatowski saw that a moment’s delay might be fatal.

Among the baggage was the only carriage in the Swedish army, that of Count Piper.

The King was helped into this and the Pole, who by tacit consent had taken command of this band of fugitives, ordered a retreat with all haste towards the Dnieper.

He and the valet, Frederic, entered the carriage with the King, and supported him, as best they could, against the jolting on the rough roads.

Karl had not spoken a word since Poniatowski had conducted him from the field of battle; he now sat up, drew out his handkerchief, and wiped the sweat and dirt from his face, at the same time glancing at the blood that was soaking from his reopened wound on to the cushions and floor of the carriage.

“Where is Count Piper?” he asked.

His voice and face were calm, but the ghastly hue of his usually fresh and glowing face told of his intense suffering.

“Sire,” replied Poniatowski, “Count Piper is taken, with all the ministers. He came out to look for your Majesty, and wandered into the counterscarp of Poltava where they were taken prisoners by the garrison.”

Karl gave not the least sign of emotion.

“And the Prince of Wurtemberg and General Rehnsköld?” he asked.

“They also are prisoners,” said Poniatowski mournfully.

The King shrugged his shoulders.

“Prisoners of the Russians!” he exclaimed. “Let us rather be prisoners of the Turks!”

He said no more, and the flight towards the Dnieper was continued.

Another misfortune overtook the unhappy King; a wheel of the carriage was wrenched off on the barbarous road, and there was no time to stop and repair it; he was therefore obliged to continue his journey on horseback.

The day was insufferably hot; they could find neither food nor water, nor was there any prospect of obtaining any in this desolate country, arid and uninhabited; several of the men were lost on the way or had dropped with fatigue; only a small number remained with the King.

These, towards evening, lost themselves in a vast trackless wood that was believed to stretch to the banks of the Dnieper.

Here, while they wandered about in the endeavor to find some road, the King’s horse fell under him with fatigue, and no efforts could get Karl any further.

Blood-stained and soiled with dust and powder, without food, drink, or repose, maddened by the pain of his wound which increased with his fatigue, his spirit tortured equally with his body by the agony of defeat at the hands of the man he most hated, even the courage and endurance of Karl could support him no longer, and though he was told that the Muscovites were searching for him in this very wood, he made no effort to move but crept under a great tree and lay there motionless.

Poniatowski put a horse-blanket under his head and sat beside him to watch, together with the few horsemen who now comprised the royal bodyguard.

As soon as the moon was up another body of fugitives, by rare good luck, came up with them.

These were Cossacks, headed by their hetman, General Mazeppa.

From them the Swedes learnt some further particulars of the battle.

The Muscovites had taken everything; baggage, guns, stores, such as there were, and the treasure consisting of 6,000,000 crowns in specie, the remains of the spoils of Poland and Saxony, together with many thousand men taken prisoners and many more slain.

Lewenhaupt, Mazeppa added, was flying towards the Dnieper with the remainder of the army; and he himself, added the old Cossack chief, had managed to bring away some mules laden with provisions, and a number of carts loaded with silver and gold.

Karl did not hear this news, either good or bad; he lay in a swoon of fatigue and pain, the moonbeams striking through the thick summer foliage on to his low fair head and blood-stained uniform.

Mazeppa glanced at him; their mutual disaster was so complete that any lamentation or even comment seemed grotesque.

The Prince said nothing, therefore, but with the fortitude that belonged to his character and his mode of life, directed that the food and water that he had brought with him should be distributed among the Swedes, then lay down on the grass and slept.

The next day the painful march was continued, and a juncture effected with Lewenhaupt on the banks of the Dnieper almost at the same moment as news was received of the approach of the Muscovites.

Lewenhaupt’s men had not eaten for two days; they lacked powder, provision--everything; they had no means of crossing the river.

But their spirit did not fail them; they had been the victors in a hundred fights that even Poltava could not efface from their remembrance, and there was not a man among them who did not believe that, now their King had rejoined them, they would once more conquer, or else completely perish, selling their lives dearly. But the man on whom they relied was no longer the man who had led them to victory; Karl, whose wound was become poisoned and who was in a violent fever, unconscious of his actions, was hurried into a small boat that the army had with it, and taken across the Dnieper with Mazeppa and his treasure, which was afterwards obliged to be cast overboard to lighten the boat.

A few other craft having been found, a certain number of officers managed to cross the river, but the desperate Cossacks who endeavored to swim on horseback or on foot were all overwhelmed and drowned.

While the army was in this pass, Prince Mentchikoff, having found his way by the broken bodies of the Swedes along the route, arrived and called upon Lewenhaupt to surrender.

One colonel of this army that had been so long glorious hurled himself with his troop at the ranks of the enemy, but Lewenhaupt bade him cease his vain defiance.

It was all over now; everything was lost, even the chance of a glorious and splendid death; several officers shot themselves, others leapt into the waters of the Dnieper.

Lewenhaupt surrendered.

The remnant of that triumphant army that had so confidently marched out of Saxony was now in the hands of the Russians; slaves henceforth who might come to envy their compatriots who had perished of misery in the forests of the Ukraine.

The news of the end of his nine years’ war was brought to Karl by the last fugitives who were able to cross the Dnieper.

He seemed incapable of understanding what was taking place, but lay silent in the poor carriage which was all that had been able to be procured for him. Without food, save the scantiest, and almost entirely without water, the little party traveled for five days across a desert country until they arrived at Oczakow, the frontier town of the Ottoman Empire.

The bureaucratic delays of the local officials hindered the progress of the fugitives into Turkey.

All the able negotiations of Poniatowski were unavailing, and pending the permission that was to come from the Pasha at Bender, the Swedes were forced to take what boats they could lay their hands on and cross the river Bug that lay between them and safety. The King and his immediate suite reached the opposite shore, but 500 men, the bulk of his little army, were captured by the pursuing Muscovites, whose cries of triumph echoed in the ears of the flying King.

So, sick, penniless, without hope or resource, his glory shattered in a day, his prestige gone forever, Karl XII entered Turkey, to throw himself on the mercy of the infidel.